As Apple's incentivised download ban has revealed, mobile app marketing and promotion is a complex and ever changing business.

That makes it an ideal business for Micah Adler. The one-time associate computer science professor, who specialised in advanced algorithms and the optimisation of random processes, is now CEO of Fiksu, a user acquisition platform for mobile games and apps.

It's a business which requires exactly those skills.

"We sit on top of 34 traffic sources and optimise in real-time to ensure our advertisers are always buying cost effective users from the best sources available," he explains.

"You can gain large volumes of users cheaply. Our goal is to be ROI positive for our clients when it comes to marketing spend."

Sifting the haystack

The sources Fiksu optimises for range from traditional banner ad networks such as AdMob and Millennial to the more exotic spectrum of incentivised events across iOS and Android.

Apple's decision to ban incentivised downloads has impacted the market, but not fundamentally changed it.

"The cost of downloads is now more expensive, but the cost of a loyal user isn't necessarily more expensive," Adler points out.

Indeed, he argues Fiksu's ability to target the right sort of user is its most valuable attribute. "We are as objective as possible when it comes to identifying the value of a user," says Adler.

Constant craving

The other part of the system's secret sauce is the way it deals with the real-time changes in the available ad traffic, enabling advertisers to make the most of constantly changing variables such as volume and the price of acquisition.

And with 55 million app downloads generated for clients ranging from Groupon to Barnes & Noble, MTV, MocoSpace and Hearst Magazine, it seems to be an approach that's working.

"Mobile is a cost effective source of users, and we're a cost effective service to get them," Adler says.

You can find out more about Fiksu here.